Starting out with the NF-12 fan installed, you can see that the fan still covers the entire width of the cooler. Since only the height and depth changed, there isn't much you can do when needing to fill 120mms of space for a fan. The straight-through adapter places have been installed on the base as well.

Looking at the cooler from the side with the fan installed, we get a good look at the length of the fans power cable; long enough to fit even the farthest power header from the socket. You can also see the fans wire retention clip. The fan can be moved up or down a few centimeters to accommodate other tightly packed components a workstation.

With the fan removed we see the fins use a straight-through design, allowing air to pass freely through the cooler. In many cases the heatsinks are going to sit very closely together and while bending the fins would give a larger amount of surface area, it will disrupt the flow to the second cooler.

A quick image from the side; you can see that the four heatpipes are nickel plated so there isn't an issue with tarnish building up on the copper.

This is where things get interesting with the NH-U12DO. As you can see, the mounting hardware for 0 degree placement is installed. If your installation requires one or both coolers to fit at 90 degrees, the top two screws are used with different brackets allowing you to rotate the fan at a right angle.

The surface finish is typical Noctua quality. There are some light machine marks that are visible to the naked eye, but using the touch test you would never know they were there.

The cooler uses the thicker fins that were updated after the NH-U12 that I had mounted on my Opteron 880 and 2220 HE systems. The newer design allows for easier 90 degree mounting since there are holes all the way through the cooler for a special, supplied screw driver to pass through.

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